- This site will be severely broken without Javascript turned on. -

Amazing Grace

In 2001, I registered the domain www.yourethemannowdog.com after seeing Sean Connery perform his famous line "You're the man now dog!" in a digital trailer for Finding Forrester. I didn't know what to do with it, and for the first few months it hosted nothing but some ascii text in the form of a landing page. Shortly after that I arrived at the format it has remained in to this day.

Ten years ago today, on April 1st, 2004, I registered the domain ytmnd.com. It was intended to be a quick little website that would host small sites that were in the same format as www.yourethemannowdog.com. These sites had been popping up rapidly at that time and just as rapidly disappearing due to lack of hosting. Now we're nearing almost one million YTMNDs made, and almost a third of my life working on and "maintaining" a site that was started as a joke.

I didn't expect this site to last as long as it has, but even as our community is dwindling in size (and quality) I find myself with a desire to work on YTMND more often. I think it's time to begin another development cycle on YTMND; ample time has passed since I've done any real development. I'd like to dispose of Flash altogether now that browser audio support is more widespread, but converting the entire site over is not an insignificant amount of work.

The last few weeks have had me doing system administration (the wiki server that we were fundraising for suddenly began having issues and is being RMA'd now) and T-shirt fulfillment. There is a lot more server setup/virtualization to do in the coming weeks, but it should hopefully reduce our bills and make things run more smoothly in the future.

I wanted to write more of a news post on this, the first day of the 10th year of YTMND's birth, but frankly, I procrastinated and am now exhausted from juggling this and work (and the obituary).

I'll update in a day or two when I get the original /contrib/ directory back up and running.

WELCOME to www.ShamanPortal.org - The Leading Global Resource Website for All Things Shamanic.Submission Guidelines: We select only posts with true Shamanic teachings or Healing contents. We welcome posts that promote discussions and events.www.ShamanPortal.org is one of the most visited and informative Shamanic websites around today. We have visitors from over 173 countries! We serve all Shamanic practitioners from every tradition and for those who are interested in walking on the Shamanic Path.***Invite your friends here to keep up with the Shamanic community worldwide!***There are many different aspects of the ShamanPortal group and www.ShamanPortal.org, and many ways in which to participate in our community:* Join in on many interesting conversations in the Talking Stick Forum (www.shamanportal.org/forum/)Check out our picks for:* Wisdom Keeper (www.shamanportal.org/display_WOM.php)* Book and Film of the Month(www.shamanportal.org/display_BOM.php)* We offer FREE postings for resources to do with Shamanic practices. Members can post art, books, broadcasts, drums, films, masks, music, organizations, supplies, information about teachers, elders, and shamanic healers; all things Shamanic. So please post your listings and join in the community!* FREE postings for all free community events and Shamanic Circles.* Are you a shamanic practitioner? Post your Shamanic Activities. We want to share your Apprenticeships, Conferences, Gatherings, Trainings, Trips and Workshops. For only $10 each. The post will also appear in our Activities calendar and will be sent to our members in our bi-monthly e-newsletter.Find out more about posting here: (www.shamanportal.org/post.php)* Catch up on daily news from people in the ShamanPortal community.* Submit articles, blogs, videos, and web-links. We want to know about your Shamanic discoveries! Tell us when you read a great new book or article, if you met a great Shaman, if you found a new blog or any other great new resource.* Hear lectures, watch videos, read over 246 articles, read blogs and so much more.(www.shamanportal.org/display_lectures.php)* Check out the FREE Shamanic Links section!(www.shamanportal.org/display_links.php)We also have many links to other resources on ShamanPortal.Visit: "Shamanic Egyptian Astrology"(http://shaman

Just in case someone has been living under a rug for the past 9 months...Around the time I returned as PrisonPlanet, superdreamkilla all of a sudden started stalking me with a bunch of stolen accounts (yet he wouldn't reply to my PMs). He then invaded GameFAQs and hacked literally OVER 9000 accounts, and kept spamming it EVERY DAY with raw, unbridled GARBAGE. He has also hacked a mod and IP-banned me there. Also, I think he's a Freemason because when I exposed them, he would delete my threads.

P.S. Here's a photo of him:http://users.content.ytmnd.com/0/2/a/02a943ddf6a12c24d82c4d023d513b19.pngIf someone can track his IRL location, I would really appreciate it.

So how about we bring back the layout from those days? Well, actually, the one seen here:http://wtflayout.ytmnd.com/? I mean, trying to popularize YTMND by making it more mainstream (which I assume was your intention) has clearly failed -- look at the views sites get these days! So maybe people would find the old YTMND's quirkiness attractive? If they want mainstream stuff, they will just go elsewhere, right? I think the most important thing would be to put back Recently Created where Up and Coming is...

No, recently created is constantly filled with mr krabs homo shit and your 9/11 lizard sites. We don't need that to be the first shit that people see. What needs to happen is the news post either needs to be made smaller, or have a tab of its own which lights up whenever a new news post is made. The contest thing has to go, because it's the biggest waste of space on the homepage and those sites end up being front page sites for over a year. That would scoot the recently created up so it is visible, along with sponsored sites, which people pay to have featured on a front page that needs to be scrolled in order to see them. Doesn't seem right.

If those stupid, sometimes NSFW, randomtmnds were to be ditched, that might make room for another column of sites, say top rated this week. Then again, up and coming and top rated are basically the same thing. One needs to go.

Yeah, and Up and Coming is constantly filled with LegoLudite/fourestcondom crap nobody outside of YTMND cares about, and the only way it gets there is because the artfags, you know -- mutually adore each other...

Also, the frontpage problems you've mentioned would be solved if we reverted to that old (or one from 2009, for that matter) layout. Just saying...

Everyone has their opinions about Lego, fourest, and fearcondom (who has been gone for I don't know how long), but when it comes down to it, they post decent material, quality stuff you probably wouldn't find too easily on other websites.

Something quirky about a particular topic:[site hossenfeffer:site]

Film and gaming:[site confident:site]

Something completely bizarre:[site rainbowremix:site]

Someone who knows nothing about YTMND, who happens to have any of the above be the first site they ever see, is likely to continue to click other YTMNDs. If they are unfortunate enough to pick one of your WTC7 gifs with a misleading title, they'll think this site is run by fucking retarded conspiracy theorists and never come back. The up and coming isn't perfect, but there's a much better chance that something good is there, more so than the recently created.

I shouldn't be one to talk about great content, as I'm no expert YTMND maker, but I'm not gonna stay quiet when a jealous lizard with zero site making skills is trashing users who clearly excel in making YTMNDs.

The old layouts are dated. The current one is fine, other than the placement issues I mentioned above.

"Someone who knows nothing about YTMND, who happens to have any of the above be the first site they ever see, is likely to continue to click other YTMNDs."

Someone who knows nothing about YTMND, who happens to have any of the above to be the first site they ever see, is likely to have a false impression of YTMND! When THIS is what YTMND is about:yourethemannowdog.ytmnd.comJust look at Mom's Spaghetti: it's got over 1.7 million views, while artfag sites get 20000 at best (nowadays).

ooh a fucking popularity contest. fuck you all. nobody gives a shit with your fake accounts and fuck votes. bitch. put recently made so people will put shit its content, you fuck. or make it ur fucking self you retarded idiot.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new website, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that website, or any website so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that website might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this website, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Congrats max. I know I'm just a pain in yr ass here now but, for what it's worth, I teach YTMND as a part of a class on meme history, single-topic websites, and anonymous and/or collective cultural production made possible by the internet. I've been doing it for years and am sad to see how, back in the 'Oughts, most of the students in any particular class already knew of the place, where as now, only one or two a semester, maybe, have even heard of it. Even weirder, considering that we're now in this second "golden age" of animated .gif popularity and absolutely drowning in the overkill of "meme" production.

You did something very smart, funny, original, and worthy of remembering in internet history, visual culture, and media theory. It's just a shame that when I show the site to classes now, I have to warn students: "don't dig around too much beyond the links I provided. It'll just make you sad." That said, you cannot imagine the joy I get from playing, say, mattdh12's Mario Makes a Sandwich to a theater full of high falootin' media theory academics, usually bickering about the finer points of Wendy Chun's take on Vannevar Bush or some boring ass shit like that.

I mean, I know that you're excited for your new job at H&R Block and it's got you all uppity and full of yourself But cleaning out shitters is cleaning out shitters, and it'll be no different there than at your ol' Wendy's gig before.

Yes, because it's funny to give you shit. Also, you needed ytmnd's help to do your homework about drawing dinosaurs for a college course because you went to a safety school for poor kids (or something like that; I can't remember the old rant now. must be all the bourbon)

[b]god your such a fucking faggot i would like to fucking write a big ass research book and get it published by MIT tech and say why your such a bad fucking influence on student, go fuck yourself you left wing cunt.[/b]

"[b]G[/b]od[b],[/b] you[b]'re[/b] such a fucking faggot[b].[/b] i would like to fucking write a big ass research book and get it published by MIT [b]Press[/b] [b]to[/b] say why you[b]'re[/b] such a bad fucking influence on student[b]s.[/b] [b]G[/b]o fuck yourself[b],[/b] you left[b]-[/b]wing cunt."

I charge by the character for my editing services. You owe me your left nut.

Isn't that interesting, the second golden age of GIFS ... I mean after youtube, whoever thought that people would want television show / animal reaction shots GIFS often annotated with simple titles, It's like some sort of internet circle of life.

Makes sense to me: Internet begins as method for sharing research [papers] between "experts," w/ such usage/content embedded into its construction, ie HTML formatting (<h1, 2, 3...> vs. <p>). Images are [eventually] included as placeholders, often merely signifiers of more/better possible visual representation. They must be compressed as efficiently as possible due to tech restraints. Over time, tho, usage changes, w/ shift in participants, stakeholders, & economics of the space. We're a visual culture and it follows that, as more people entered the set of users and tech increased capacity to move info at greater speeds, the text-based web was supplanted by visual language, first w/ images of consumption (including porn) and further w/ an influx of pop cultural ref, documenting the minutia of personal/daily life, cat pics, etc. Those lovingly terrible "homepage" GIFs of the '90s were the visual language of a particular moment of internet usage, design, population. YouTube comes along and provides a different way to express this wider usage of visual, popular and/or personal documentary narcissism: a flood of Vlog response videos to every semi-popular post. The "participatory" comment section proves interesting briefly, then dead, as it merely iterates through response patterns of binary critique and lowest common denominator trolling. Then comes Tumblr, where visual response to visual culture post (often) allows for a more nuanced, less literal exchange between participants. GIFs are reborn as signifier for "what I mean to say is..." By late 2000s, a generation of "digital natives" speak to each other only thru language of found imagery, producing little content but "communicating" (IMO, tho better words may exist) thru recombinant meme production and pop culture stand in. And boom: 2012 is the year of the GIF. See also: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25128416/Ways-of-Seeing-John-Berger

Your most clever April Fools' Day prank yet. If only you'd take that joke and string it out for a year like you did with the horrible purple wallpaper layout, then people might actually start coming back.

Have always loved this website. I hadn't visited in a while, and came across a ytmnd on TheChive, and was pretty pissed they didn't give credit to the creator. Just for reference, it was the *A Tiny Glimpse* YTMND, by Smoothmedia. That YTMND inspired my hobby in astronomy and astrophysics.

I'm just curious: how many moderators does YTMND have that are active, if any?

There's no doubt that the community's quality has gone down. From any perspective if it's not x user who thinks x user(s) are the problem, it's the other way around. People have different tastes and different ideas as to what YTMND should be, so it seems to me the most effective way to make the community better is simply to reduce redundant banter and argumentative users who are pricks on a daily or near daily basis - this is a small group of people, among a not so large group of total active users.

Of course, what constitutes someone being a prick is also a variable. Long, recurring troll discussions between two or more who always go at it as being one that most people would agree on. I'm sure there are rules that cover a portion of this sort of thing and that's led to some of the more volatile, non-contributing members (who need not be named) being comment banned, account banned, possibly IP banned (if that has been done). Then of course there's the very obvious moon crew shit which personally seems to have dwindled, however it seems for anyone who posts a generic moon crew site, an IP ban is in order.

I'm not sure how the site will evolve from this point, but I know that behavior has been a detracting factor firsthand from various users (mik3m, comradvolk and myself just to name a few). The back and forth thing is an obvious byproduct of all this, and I'm not talking about YTMND transients like Umfuld who actually makes sites, says things in jest and is at best grumpy from time to time, more so those who seek to start shit. On occasion, this place is sometimes comparable to 4chan.

So with all that said, would it be in the best interest of YTMND to give well-behaved, legacy members who are still active possible moderator jobs? People like Ochobobo come to mind. Many might decline it but I'd assume some would be happy to take the position.

There are no moderators and really there never have been in any real capacity. When there were moderators they would set sites as NSFW, but beyond that, they didn't have the power to do much.

The problem stems in that anyone who would be a moderator here is also a member. Each member has their own point of view on who is a troll, what constitutes an offense worth taking action for and what should just be shrugged off.

I think one of the fatal flaws of YTMND is the way I built it to be permanent. Once you delete a comment or a user or a site, it's gone for good. For that reason alone I always was afraid to give moderators any real power.

A few weeks ago, while I was looking through the Wayback Machine for some old assets for something unrelated, I came across a rodheh comment you left me, totally out of the blue, back when I didn't even know who/what account you were, where you simply told me to fuck off because everyone here hated you or some shit and blah blah blah. It was funny because it reminded me of what a tool you are, especially when you are pretending that you never were or still aren't a tool but, really, just here to, you know, help out.

The other thing: will we see any site UI changes? Possible customization options or different options (i.e. "Classic style, "Golden age of YTMND" orange style, the dark pink, black and red style, current style, etc.)

(unless of course this is all bullshit, but given that this is in fact the birthday according to a whois report, prior April Fools posts here resulting in an actual change and the fact that there were no April Fools posts when the site reached its lowest point of inactivity, I'm assuming it's part joke, part truth - in a YTMND fashion)

I personally do not see any major changes needed to the UI. maybe just like making sure things that are supposed to work actually work, like deleting ytmnd mail messages, or actually hiding posts of enemies. I might throw in a canvas add on for animated PNGs. If you get those to work, they look sweet.

While I know how much contention there is over site design, and how fond of various designs over the years people have been, it's frankly not worth the work. If I'm going to spend 40+ hours on development I'd rather it go to bug fixing and feature-adding or cleanup than adding another theme.

With the last major update I made a templating system that would theoretically allow a user to choose a specific theme, and I had the intention at one point of backporting themes, but it never became a priority.

Another issue is that when I change/fix/add/remove something, I'd have to do it in every theme, multiplying my work. I'd be pleased to give people both the current templates, and say, the templates from 5 years ago and they can try to port them over, but

Well, thanks for the answers Max. Specifically about the mods as well. It seemed inherently problematic and while I can think of users that would probably be broadly neutral and reasonable, there still exists the possibility for abuse. Though, without any real mods and having YTMND remain a playground for childish fights is the best, most realistic option for the site then I guess those who remain devoted enough will continue to stay as the community dwindles because of said fights.

I honestly don't care much about the layout, other than the fact that several gross uncensored shock sites often appear in the random bar, so I support getting rid of that. Basically I think you should work on banning various trolls (you know who) and maybe implementing the old RANDOMTMND function again that allows you to mix and match assets (possibly including a random background+random foreground feature), although that's not essential.

Your parents are quite concerned that you've been hanging out with the wrong crowd, madDog: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-users-of-leading-white-supremacist-web-forum-responsible-for-many-dead

I almost thought this was a "I'm shutting down the site news post" Thank god it isn't. Good to know you're back on improving the site, max! Where can I find the measurements of the shirt sizes? I am not sure whether to get a small or a medium because it varies from store to store

Can we get some webcam streaming features? I feel like if we got see each other, that we would have a much better time here on the YTMND.com website. Also mutual masturbation has many proven health benefits.

this site is amazing but I found it 8 years too late. I've been crying from laughter but apparently it's falling behind other websites. just wanted to vent somewhere since the goddamn support site doesn't let me log in properly

Hey now. I'm going to have a booth at Salt Lake Comic Con if anyone wants to stop by. I'll be selling memorabilia and giving out autographed screen shots of my YTMNDs. I'll be next to Seinfeld's soup nazi and Napoleon Dynamite.

going through my old PMs to be a fucking idiot and reply to 8 year old messages. accidentally got sucked into messages i care about. this site fucking rocks and will always have a place in my heart and the people rock and i'm done saying words

Max, those days during the eBaum war were as real as they come. Every day was INTREPID. Split between KHAN and NOOOOOOOO!!! You ran from it. And now, you've been led back to war by something less than real...

Hey, there is a new app called Clammr that lets you make YTMND-like memes with your iphone. They have a big library of audio clips and you can pull in whatever you want from soundcloud or your own dropbox/library etc. Instructional youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHpoPqIRxM4. If you join, check out some of the posts at @joeldouglas & follow

Take down the contest and news post :) The dates stamped on them does so much damage. you still have a site that's breeding some form of "original content" and a huge net of past participators who, at the very least, liked the site at some point and will likely pop back occasionally to see what's up. seems like the machine could keep puttering along if it didn't look like the admin disappeared 19 months ago

Little indifferent. Yeah, a lot of great things will be gone, but an immeasurable amount more of waste will be as well.

Hoping the archive.org gets what's relevant. You're already capable of viewing deleted sites that were popular. When YTMND is gone, all of the "lore" anyone would actually desire to go back and revisit should still load. Whatever this Suzanne shit still hanging around is will be gone with the rest of the trash.

hey max, I sponsored m0nde's funny noot noot site [site nootnoot:site] and it's showing up as being sponsored by some no name user called "pin" who hasn't been online since forever. can you fix that plz k thx

can you stop the fake modding by having faggot ass lurg quit making his fuckign shitty stupid nick dick sites with jews in them yuo know they suck and getting his faggot posse to upvote this shit that sits aond shits all on ytmnd all day unless you like that sort of thhing but everyone else thinks it sucks.

This site was once great.... On a related note, I'm looking for a page but I cant seem to find it. It involved Teal'c from Stargate SG-1 translating a Jaffa joke. The joke translated into "FAGGOT!" Please ytmnd, find it for me. You're my only hope!

I'm going to miss this site and everyone on it so much. If I could do it all differently, I don't think I would have spent these past 11 years any differently than making YTMNDs. I love you all regardless of what you thought of me or how I treated you. No matter what happens to this site, we will all be YTMNDers for life and we will go on to have an impact on this world strongly inspired by our experiences here. Goodbye YTMND and all who inhabited it, you were the best waste of time an Internets could bring us.

If this really is the end, I just want to thank Max for creating this place. I had some really good times on this site. Its Golden Age was a thing of beauty- there was so much creativity, and so much craziness. And thanks to all the users who made so many awesome YTMNDs over the years. The internet won't see another place like this again.